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It's a complete lie that industrial agriculture is the only effective way of feeding everyone. It seems to be that it produces the most yield of a crop, but the

It's a complete lie that industrial agriculture is the only effective way of feeding everyone. It seems to be that it produces the most yield of a crop, but therein lies the problem: The only metric that we look at is crop yield. Sure it yields a lot, but it's completely destroying the land in the process. If we continue to use industrial agriculture practices (which are completely dependent on oil) humanity will collectively starve when all the topsoil is dead and the water sufficiently poisoned. We've created our own vicious feedback loop by planting massive areas with a single crop that has been bred for size and shelf life more so than disease/pest resistance and nutrition. The monoculture is ripe for attack by pests due to lack of biodiversity. Our response to this problem has been to double down by spraying the crop with herbicides and pesticides. The chemicals kill beneficial fungi, bacteria, and insects which leave the crop entirely defenseless against the pests unless it is sprayed again and again. The bacteria and fungi that make soil "soil" and not "dirt" also die, and the only way to grow the next crop in dead soil is to till it (which kills even more soil life) and dump synthetic fertilizers all over it. The fertilizer runoff pollutes water sources. Much like how large centralized computer systems make everyone vulnerable to massive failures (think Cloudflare or AWS outages), large monoculture farming makes our food system very fragile and the resulting food isn't even particularly nutritious. We need to use regenerative farming practices, but that means defeating the oil industry, among others.

nemo44x 6y ago
I agree, it reminds of Nassim Taleb's idea of anti-fragility in that because our monoculture and reliance in chemicals to sustain it, it would only take a certain devastating thing to endanger the national food supply. Do you have examples of or references to regenerative farming practices? I ask because I'm curious about them to see if they scale like modern Ag which for all of its problems (many you pointed out), has been effective in many ways. I feel like in the end it will always come down to money.
- davexunit 6y ago
  Sure, starting really generally: "regenerative agriculture" and "permaculture" are good keywords. I think looking for any solution to scale the way industrial agriculture does is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. The scaling of industrial agriculture is the problem. I don't think any one alternative is "the" solution, but rather that many alternative methods need to be applied where appropriate and at smaller scales. Smaller farms but lots more of them. Food needs to be grown in places that we currently don't think of as farmland: mass lawn conversion, urban farming, etc. Okay, onto some references of techniques that I can think of off the top of my head: Silvopasture is a way of combining tree crops with livestock grazing that sequesters carbon from the atomosphere. https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/practices/silvopasture.php https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/practices/silvopasture.php Riparian buffers separate rivers from farmland. They filter runoff from the fields, guard against floods because healthy soil and vegetation act like a sponge, and, if many land owners participate, they create uninterrupted habitat for wildlife. This sacrifices some field area, but it means that a "100 year flood" that now happen more frequently due to climate change won't destroy a family's source of income by washing away all the soil away. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/smallfarms/what-riparian-buffer https://www.extension.iastate.edu/smallfarms/what-riparian-b... "No till" or "no dig" cultivation. Tilling breaks networks of fungi and bacteria, causing a short-term burst of available nutrients for plants, but done year after year reduces soil health (in other words: diminishing returns.) Sowing or transplanting with minimal soil disturbance and top-dressing with compost builds soil life over time and is less labor intensive. https://charlesdowding.co.uk/faqs/ https://charlesdowding.co.uk/faqs/ Swales reduce pressure on irrigation systems on sloped land by storing water in the soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swale_(landform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swale_(landform) Cover cropping means that the field isn't left bare. There's always something growing on it to keep the soil from eroding or blowing away in the wind. Cover crops act as a living mulch, and then as a regular mulch when they are slashed down when it comes time to plant the cash crop. Legumes are often used as cover crops because they are a natural fertilizer due to a symbiotic relationship they form with a special kind of bacteria that takes nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_crop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_crop A book on the subject of carbon farming: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-carbon-farming-solution/ https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-carbon-farming-solu... A book (more philosophical than technical) about a Japanese rice farmer who successfully rejected western agriculture and pioneered natural farming practices: https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-one-straw-revolution?variant=1094932353 https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-one-straw-revolution?varia...
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    This is a really great source of resources and search terms, thanks! It feels like a lot of people are doing active work here to change the way we think about Ag from a WW2 inspired industrial model to something that is sustainable, good for the ecosystems, and still affordable so poor people can eat food too. It just doesn't seem like it gets the media attention it should and it's something that effects everyone. I only became interested in these things when I bought a home and had a lawn and decided to make it a hobby of mine. I started off buying various herbicides and fertilizers and applying them safely and responsibly. But started to read the labels a bit more and research the chemicals since it occurred to me that wearing safety equipment and staying off areas for 3 days means that I'm probably working with potentially dangerous things. And even if they are "safe" to be on after a day (they claim) it's still sort of weird to think about applying these things when pets and family and friends will be on it, oblivious to the chemicals that have been applied. Maybe with the limited use and reduced concentrations for home use mean they won't really harm anything, but it still makes me feel a bit uncertain about using them. My wife maintains an organic vegetable garden (which is really tough so I now have so much more respect for organic farmers that bring to market pricy but delicious produce) and I wonder about these chemicals drifting to the garden in the soil. I've sort of found a balance of using organic fertilizers, compost we make, and good old fashioned manual weeding, etc so I don't have to use the herbicides so much. I still use them in areas where hand weeding isn't practical, like if a weed is coming out of a crack in the hardscaping, for example. But, it's a lot more work to be sure than using chemicals which were very effective. I'm happy I never used any pesticides. We don't have a huge bug problem but it's nice to see butterflies, honeybees, etc even if you have to put up with the occasional mosquito.
  - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
    None of this works at scale. The problem is that we are past carrying capacity. We need to control population. I am in favour of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth solution where we set aside half the planet for habitat and inhabit only half of the land and leave the oceans alone.
    - davexunit 6y ago

nemo44x 6y ago

I agree, it reminds of Nassim Taleb's idea of anti-fragility in that because our monoculture and reliance in chemicals to sustain it, it would only take a certain devastating thing to endanger the national food supply. Do you have examples of or references to regenerative farming practices? I ask because I'm curious about them to see if they scale like modern Ag which for all of its problems (many you pointed out), has been effective in many ways. I feel like in the end it will always come down to money.

davexunit 6y ago
Sure, starting really generally: "regenerative agriculture" and "permaculture" are good keywords. I think looking for any solution to scale the way industrial agriculture does is approaching the problem from the wrong direction. The scaling of industrial agriculture is the problem. I don't think any one alternative is "the" solution, but rather that many alternative methods need to be applied where appropriate and at smaller scales. Smaller farms but lots more of them. Food needs to be grown in places that we currently don't think of as farmland: mass lawn conversion, urban farming, etc. Okay, onto some references of techniques that I can think of off the top of my head: Silvopasture is a way of combining tree crops with livestock grazing that sequesters carbon from the atomosphere. https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/practices/silvopasture.php https://www.fs.usda.gov/nac/practices/silvopasture.php Riparian buffers separate rivers from farmland. They filter runoff from the fields, guard against floods because healthy soil and vegetation act like a sponge, and, if many land owners participate, they create uninterrupted habitat for wildlife. This sacrifices some field area, but it means that a "100 year flood" that now happen more frequently due to climate change won't destroy a family's source of income by washing away all the soil away. https://www.extension.iastate.edu/smallfarms/what-riparian-buffer https://www.extension.iastate.edu/smallfarms/what-riparian-b... "No till" or "no dig" cultivation. Tilling breaks networks of fungi and bacteria, causing a short-term burst of available nutrients for plants, but done year after year reduces soil health (in other words: diminishing returns.) Sowing or transplanting with minimal soil disturbance and top-dressing with compost builds soil life over time and is less labor intensive. https://charlesdowding.co.uk/faqs/ https://charlesdowding.co.uk/faqs/ Swales reduce pressure on irrigation systems on sloped land by storing water in the soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swale_(landform) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swale_(landform) Cover cropping means that the field isn't left bare. There's always something growing on it to keep the soil from eroding or blowing away in the wind. Cover crops act as a living mulch, and then as a regular mulch when they are slashed down when it comes time to plant the cash crop. Legumes are often used as cover crops because they are a natural fertilizer due to a symbiotic relationship they form with a special kind of bacteria that takes nitrogen from the air and deposits it in the soil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_crop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_crop A book on the subject of carbon farming: https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-carbon-farming-solution/ https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-carbon-farming-solu... A book (more philosophical than technical) about a Japanese rice farmer who successfully rejected western agriculture and pioneered natural farming practices: https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-one-straw-revolution?variant=1094932353 https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-one-straw-revolution?varia...
- nemo44x 6y ago
  This is a really great source of resources and search terms, thanks! It feels like a lot of people are doing active work here to change the way we think about Ag from a WW2 inspired industrial model to something that is sustainable, good for the ecosystems, and still affordable so poor people can eat food too. It just doesn't seem like it gets the media attention it should and it's something that effects everyone. I only became interested in these things when I bought a home and had a lawn and decided to make it a hobby of mine. I started off buying various herbicides and fertilizers and applying them safely and responsibly. But started to read the labels a bit more and research the chemicals since it occurred to me that wearing safety equipment and staying off areas for 3 days means that I'm probably working with potentially dangerous things. And even if they are "safe" to be on after a day (they claim) it's still sort of weird to think about applying these things when pets and family and friends will be on it, oblivious to the chemicals that have been applied. Maybe with the limited use and reduced concentrations for home use mean they won't really harm anything, but it still makes me feel a bit uncertain about using them. My wife maintains an organic vegetable garden (which is really tough so I now have so much more respect for organic farmers that bring to market pricy but delicious produce) and I wonder about these chemicals drifting to the garden in the soil. I've sort of found a balance of using organic fertilizers, compost we make, and good old fashioned manual weeding, etc so I don't have to use the herbicides so much. I still use them in areas where hand weeding isn't practical, like if a weed is coming out of a crack in the hardscaping, for example. But, it's a lot more work to be sure than using chemicals which were very effective. I'm happy I never used any pesticides. We don't have a huge bug problem but it's nice to see butterflies, honeybees, etc even if you have to put up with the occasional mosquito.
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  None of this works at scale. The problem is that we are past carrying capacity. We need to control population. I am in favour of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth solution where we set aside half the planet for habitat and inhabit only half of the land and leave the oceans alone.
  - davexunit 6y ago